Daedalas
The Daedalas Bloodline The First Daedalas The original Daedalas was the world's first mutant super-genius (imbued by Promethean Fire), and used his genius to create the marvels he is known for in mythology, such as the labyrinth and mostly famously, the original Icarus Rig, the harness and wings that allowed his son to fly to his tragic fate. The story of Icarus flying high and burning in the fires of the Sun was begun by Daedalas, himself as that is what he believes he saw. He never found out his son's true fate. The Daedalas Legacy What was not told in mythology, was that Daedalas had another son, as Daedalas tried to replace Icarus, and his genius was passed onto this new child. Daedalas never tried to rebuild the Icarus Rig, but could never bring himself to throw away his own, and after Daedalas's death, the new son found the Rig, hidden in Daedalas's tower. And so began the Daedalas bloodline, as each following son learned of Daedalas and Icarus, trying to fashion their own functioning flying machines. Icarus became a figure of reverence, the name Icarus Rig remaining, a sign of what could be achieved, but also a warning for taking science too far. It is unknown when the first of the bloodline used his wings to save someone, but it stuck. As they took on the name of the original bearer of the wings for every Rig they built, they also took on the name of their creator, Daedalas, the first son of each father of the bloodline (sons were always born to the family, women only married into it. It seemed the bloodline was genetically locked to produce males of certain features) always became the Daedalas, creating their own rig, augmenting the wings, armour and weapons built in as they so chose, and any other children either went into training (trained by the grandfather or father) to be the next Daedalas, or became part of the family's branch of archivists, gathering information about the stranger aspects of the world, working out where the Daedalas needed to go next or inventors, creating the next new weapon for the Daedalas to use. In their Vault, the family gathered and stored the extroadinary items they had found. Daedalas and the Society The first Daedalas to encounter the group of immortals known as the Infinity Society was in 64 AD, during the Great Fire of Rome, where he was recruited into the Society by the Magician, before it was fully formed. This recruitment (Magician's connection to this Daedalas for use of Avalon passed on through the bloodline along with its intelligence) followed a brief first battle with the transformed, confused, time warping Icarus, whose energy emitting had inadvertantly caused the Great Fire. A Daedalas joined the Society on their first mission during Camelot. He had the problem that he could not understand the local language, and, as he entered the city in disguise, he attempted to entertain passers by with his inventions, taking away the trade from another local entertainer, and man performing knife tricks, calling himself The Great Balthazar. This is the first of several humiliating encounters brough about by this Daedalas (unintentionally) to Balthazar that day. Balthazar ends up finding him, as he keeps disappearing, challenging him to a public duel, which Balthazar loses, and Daedalas disappears again, leaving Balthazar angered and dishonoured. Later in the day he encounters Morgana le Fey during evening festivities, who charms him into attempting to kidnap Guinnevere. Chiyo, spying on Le Fey, hears the conversation, and she and Daedalas remain with the Queen in her tower to protect her from harm whilst King Arthur is away. Balthazar scales the tower, only to find Daedalas waiting for him. He leaps Daedalas's head to get into the Queen's bedroom only to find her escaped. Daedalas then defeats Balthazar in single combat. (I am a bit sketchy on remembering details, so Tom, if you are reading this, feel free to add what you might remember.) Balthazar ends up imprisoned, but is encounted by the Dark Magician, who offers him great power for revenge on the Daedalas, which he takes. Balthazar gains powers of transmutating objects into energy and also becomes ageless, terrorising and killing various Daedali (the collective term used) across the centuries. The next Daedalas the team encounter is an old man, as his son was recently killed by Balthazar, and so is not quite as physically adept as his predecesor, and something of a comedic sort. He helps the team as they plunge into the dreams of Emperor Xuansong to save him from Oni, in 724. The next Daedalas to be encountered is far younger than the first two, only just recently enstated after Balthazar killed his father, and is filled with rage and impetuousness. He comes across some Vikings as the team approach York in 1870, and kills some Vikings camped around a fire in a merciless fashion not exhibited by anyone in the Society, though Grendel manages to scare most of them away. Daedalas then sneaks off on his own, as they have come to locate the statue of a Frozen Man giving Vikings super powers, and he tries to locate it himself whilst the rest of the Society goes into Viking Occupied York in disguise. Daedalas manages to find the lair of Ivar the Boneless, and whilst he and some of his men leave to go and meet the Society, after a runner comes to them, Daedalas appears and slaughters the men left behind. Seeing that the frozen form is of a wicked man, and recognising what that might mean, Daedalas sits and waits upon the stage for Ivar's return. When Ivar returns with a disguised Society, claiming they have come to join him, he responds to Daedalas in fury, and strike him down in a single blow by using his own powers to stretch out his arms and bring his battleaxe bearing down on him. As Ivar stomps over to decapitate Daedalas, Angus secretly reinforces Daedalas's armour from the inside, preventing the inevitable decapitation. Daedalas unfortunately misses the following fight as Atlanteans burst in, and Icarus is released. During 1204, during the Siege of Constantinope, the Daedalas Family call the Society to their stronghold, where a mysterious man called Xtopherus appears in their Vault, seemingly bonded with one of the Vault's stored treasures, the Thytos Disk. The team are met by the grandfather of the current Daedalas, whilst the Daedalas of the time is out fighting the siege, along with Grendel. Whilst the team are interrogating Xtopherus, The Great Balthazar secretly breaks his way into the stronghold, turning part of the wall to energy, and also stores their archives to energy, along with killing the young boy that is there. The boy is ressurected by Angus, and the team goes out into Constantinople to purse Balthazar, where is summarily defeated. Whilst the Daedali live, their knowledge accuulated over the centuries has been destroyed, and this causes a decline in the Family's activities. When the Daedalas of this time time dies some decades later, having bonded closely with Grendel after the man has been training with the Family for centuries after losing his powers to Icarus, the dying Icarus passes on the title of Daedalas onto Grendel, the only time the title has existed outside of the bloodline. Being an immortal, Grendel is able to carry on the Family's works for many more centuries, as the Family grows, but more became inventors and archivists, supporting Grendel, as opposed going out to fight themselves. (For further on the adventures of Grendel as Daedalas, read his page.) With Grendel as the Daedalas, much of the Family spread across the world, forming a network of contacts for the new Daedalas, able to gather wider information, but the bulk of the Family moved to London where they established a base, using a warehouse as a front. Grendel is the only Daedalas to not possess an Icarus Rig (as by this point, Icarus was no longer a point of reverence from the Family) and Grendel was built a prosthetic metal arm (as he one-armed) that fires grappling hooks. The only other time that someone of the Daedalas bloodline accompanied the Society on a mission after Grendel assumed title of Daedalas, was in 1589, when the team were hunting the notorious werewolf, Peter Stumpf . The Quartermaster of the Daedali (the primary inventor, an extreme eccentric) turned up rather randomly (in a drill machine) to show Grendel that he had a new power detector working, something more efficient than the means the party already possessed, to hunt Icarus. Unfortunately, being a prototype invention, it ceased functioning before he ever saw Grendel. He did however help fight against the werewolf, showing how the bloodline's combat training had been lost, but being able to utilise a wide range of gadgets unlike any other Daedalas, including utilising an electric eel with a system of electrodes attached as a form of resuscitation, and then firing it from a crossbow (which, albeit briefly dropped the werewolf). He also had a fondness for Greek Fire explosives. At the end of the mission, Magician became infuriated with the eccentric man, and teleported the Quartermaster back to London against his will. In 1666, Icarus manifested in London, and he headed straight for the Daedali stronghold, creating a swarm of duplicates after taking a manifestation of this power from the Ocean King , and blasted open the roof, seeking the collective Fire of the Daedalas bloodline (a massive family of mutants.) The Family opened fire with a host of advanced firearms and munitions that they possesed at the time, and did shoot down about thirty of the duplicates under the barrage. Then Angus utilised a new creation he called his Pandora's Box, designed to take energy from Icarus. Unfortunately, the weapon triggered Icarus's energy releasing power and rather than make Icarus powerful, caused him to radiate the largest explosion yet, as the wave triggered the excess energies of his 90 or so remaining duplicates as well, in a chain reaction. All of the Family within were killed in the explosion, except for the few working in the catacombs beneath it. These remaining few came up in the next few days to help Grendel and Marcus clear the rubble and move out and bury the dead. Only two days following the warehouse's destruction, the team were alerted to a fight between Prometheus and Ocean King. Whilst the team went out to deal with this, a group of Atlanteans snuck into the warehouse and murdered the remaining Family members. This was the day of the official death of the Daedalas Family, though the existance of the bloodline and some of its knowledge carried on, as Grendel had specifically spread it across the globe, it just lost its central form of control and hub of knowledge, after taking centuries to rebuild it. Inheritors of the Bloodline ''' Not all, but a majority of real history's geniuses (such as Einstein and Da Vinci) are inheritors of the Daedalus gene, as a result of the Family's global expansion before its death. Also, many, but not all, of the modern world's super geniuses, owe their shared singular mutation to the bloodline. The only defined superhero inheritors of the Daedali so far are the Rattlesnake's, a family of Australian superheroes that began early in Australia's history, sharing the same hero name, much like the Daedali originally did, passing the mantle through the family. They use their genius to create mechanical boomerangs with a variety of effects, and have a routine of intensive combat training that again emulate's their ancestors. '''Powers Bestowed by the Bloodline All Daedali possess the mutation of 'super-genius.' Simply put, they are able to concieve and create the kinds of science that are at least decades, and often centuries ahead, of their time. The average inheritor can only really conceptualise these things, and often uses a naturally boosted intelligence for more mundane tasks, but with increased productivity (these types of inheritor include some of history's major scientific theorists.) More extroadinary examples (those who have bore the Daedalas or Quartermaster mantle or have become superheroes) are able to bring these theories into reality. Though naturally intelligent far above the human in all areas, a Daedali's genius usually foccusses upon a particular area of science where they flourish. They can certainly be talented in a variety of sciences, but their amazing gadgets usually fall into one specific type. With such a natural enhanced understanding, the inheritors can become masters of combat if they train, but if they do not, are as average humans in this regard. Those who bore the name Daedalas followed a strict training regimen which passed on the same skillset to each one, though it expanded in time when certain missions brought into light the need for new skills, which would be trained by the next to bear the name.